Monday, December 27, 2010

It was a balmy 26 degrees on Monday morning when the Georgia Bulldogs took the field for their first Liberty Bowl practice. If only they had waited until noon, when it vaulted all the way up to 32.

More than a few staff members brought hot coffee with them out to the field. Mike Bobo had straight black coffee. No cream, no sugar, no nothing for the hardy offensive coordinator.

“It keeps my figure,” Bobo said.

Memphis native Marlon Brown pointed out that the weather back in Athens had been rather frigid for the first portion of bowl practice. That didn’t save Brown from some ribbing.

“The Florida guys are giving me grief because they went home and it was like 70 degrees. And they get mad at me because it’s cold here,like it's my fault,” Brown said.

The one consolation the Bulldogs were taking was the weather was supposed to improve by Friday – if 60 degrees and rain, the current gameday forecast, can be considered an improvement.

“I’ll take 60 degrees and rain rather than 20 degrees and 15 mph winds,” head coach Mark Richt said.

The weather around the East has been bad in general the past few days, causing almost everyone – other than Brown, who lives five minutes away – to get to Memphis later than planned. In fact, two players still hadn’t arrived by Monday’s practice.

Sophomore tight end Arthur Lynch, flying out of New England, couldn’t get out on Sunday, and with the blizzard hitting the northeast, was still having trouble as of Monday.

Freshman cornerback Jordan Love had his flight out of Washington, D.C., canceled on Sunday, and he wasn’t able to get another flight into Memphis until the next morning.

(I was on Love's canceled flight, so I guess I was luckier than him in getting re-routed to Memphis. But if Love's luggage arrives with him, he was better off than me. Even as I type this I’m still wearing the same clothes I wore all of Sunday. Which is just awesome.)

Then there were the three players who missed the game because of academic issues.

Head coach Mark Richt expounded a bit on the absence of Caleb King, who violated a school policy by missing five academic meetings. Richt made clear he had no qualms with the policy, which has been in effect for most of his 10-year tenure at Georgia.

“We have a plan for them, and if they follow it they’ll be fine. If they don’t, then they’ll have to suffer the consequences for it,” Richt said. “It’s not the policy’s fault, it’s Caleb’s fault for not following through on his responsibility.”

A few other tidbits as Georgia began its week in Memphis:

- The team picked quite a place to hold its practices: The Memphis University School isn’t a university, but the prep school probably has nicer facilities than most non-Division I schools. And maybe some of those too.

The buildings have pillars, the field has a pretty good press box, and there's a sport and fitness center. In general the campus looks like the kind of place where the parents have bumper stickers that say “My other car is a 100-foot yacht.”

“This is a nice place,” Richt said, in the kind of understatement that would make him sound almost British. “You couldn’t ask for a better facility.”

One of the reasons the Bulldogs picked it was because it has a turf field, just like the Liberty Bowl. Richt said he’d heard that other teams had used this field after bad weather, so they figured they might as well make it their home base.

- Brown and Austin Long, a freshman offensive lineman who is also from the Memphis area, each recommended one barbecue joint:

“They said that we had to eat Rendezvous barbecue, so that’s what we’re doing for lunch today. So we’re ready,” Richt said.

- Bobo was sporting a goatee, which he was awaiting word on whether he’d be able to keep for the game.

“It was something we were doing before we left. We’ve gotta decide if we’ve gotta shave before the game. Coach Richt hasn’t given us the verdict yet,” Bobo said. “The only time I had any growth this year was South Carolina. We lost, so out of superstition I’ll probably shave.”

9 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Rendezvous has great dry rubbed ribs, but I prefer the Commissary when I get BBQ. Memphis isn't what it used to be, but it's still a good place to have some fun. Safe travels to everyone heading that way.

Within walking distance of the Liberty Bowl is the best barbecue in Memphis, bar none: Central Barbecue. You'd be crazy to miss out. Not quite the atmosphere of the 'Vous downtown, but the quality and, more importantly, the consistency of quality, is way better.

Search Top Blogs...

Subscribe To

My Latest Tweets

Twitter Updates

About the Author

Seth Emerson has been covering the SEC and Georgia (on and off) since 2002. He worked at the Albany Herald from 2002-05, then spent five years at The State in Columbia, S.C., covering South Carolina. He returned to Athens in August of 2010, only to find that David Pollack and David Greene were no longer playing for the Bulldogs. Adjustments were made.

Emerson is originally from Silver Spring, Md., and graduated from Maryland in 1998 with a degree in journalism and a minor in getting lost on the way to practically everywhere. Then he spent four years at The Washington Post, covering small colleges, a couple NCAA basketball tournaments, and on one glorious day, was yelled at by Tony Kornheiser. It was probably at The Post that he also learned to write in the third person.

These days he lives in Athens with his beloved and somewhat wimpy dog, Archie. Together they fight crime at night in northeast Georgia, except on nights there is no crime, in which case they sit at home, sip on white wine and watch reruns of "Mad Men."